Obesity is increasing across many segments of society. Also increasing are the health complications that obesity causes, such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and stroke. The most effective way to avoid obesity and its associated health complications is to live a healthy, active lifestyle, which includes regular exercise, healthy eating, and vigilantly monitoring one's overall well-being (such as taking readings for blood pressure, heart rate, etc.). Although it is relatively easy for individuals to determine if they are regularly exercising and eating properly, monitoring one's overall well-being is not quite as simple. Most individuals do not have the proper devices or equipment to monitor vital signs and other biometrics. Furthermore, they may not understand the data produced by the devices or equipment. Finally, even if they have the proper devices or equipment, they may not be motivated to use it. Use of the devices or equipment simply is not fun or entertaining.
Awareness of one's overall well-being is a vital part of a healthy lifestyle. Evidence suggests that employees can benefit greatly from an increased awareness and concern for their health and wellness as recent studies show a correlation between job-induced stress and unwanted weight gain, as well as working overtime and heart health. Employees are not the only ones that benefit from the increased awareness. Employers also benefit from initiatives to increase employee awareness of their well-being by realizing a reduction in costs related to healthcare and lost productivity.
Consistently monitoring one's vital signs or biometrics is an effective way for individuals to increase awareness of their health and wellness. Nonetheless, individuals typically do not check their biometrics often enough because the experience of doing so is not convenient, rewarding, or stimulating nor does it confer an immediate benefit. For many individuals, monitoring physical activity, such as through the use of a pedometer, is convenient and rewarding in that the device provides feedback using simple and easy-to-comprehend visual representations. For many individuals, monitoring devices such as pedometers confer immediate gratification to users, and therefore, they are more likely to continue using them.
Even with devices that monitor physical activity, motivation to continue the activity can diminish or cease over time. Thus, it is important to have a continuous source of inspiration for individuals to keep them involved in monitoring their well-being. It is especially important to provide, whenever possible, an element of fun in the activity because people are more likely to be proactive when they perceive an activity as being fun and not simply another chore or task. Friendly competition is another element of fun that can inspire people to habitually check their biometrics. Because many people enjoy visual and auditory presentations, incorporating graphical representations and music or sounds in an interactive display of data can make the activity even more enjoyable and increase motivation to monitor their biometrics.
Therefore, there is a need for a system and method for collecting and displaying individuals' biometric data in a convenient and artistic manner. There is also a need for a system and method that allows individuals to compare their biometric data with the biometric data of their peers. There is also a need for a fun and entertaining way of visually representing the most recently collected biometric data of multiple individuals and updating the representation to illustrate, for example, how many times an individual has scanned their biometric data that day.